Sunday, August 5, 2012

Preface: This post does not admit any guilt to punishable crimes; nor can its contents be used against me in the pursuit of compensation for over priced road crossing chickens.

Let us begin.

The neighbors on either side of us have been feuding for months. Until this week I have managed to stay on the outskirts of said feud, being amused by the sneaky moves of either side but never participating.

Due to my terrible driving skills and the inability of chickens to cross roads, I was nearly a participant.

The "Capulets" are organic chicken farmers (which just means they don't feed their chickens store bought chicken feed but let them eat whatever crap is the ground instead)

The "Montagues" are field farmers that sell their products to a neighboring dairy. The Montagues also have children, which is why they recently procured a golden retriever puppy.

While still in training the puppy returned to the Montague home looking like this:

And the Capulets had 12 less organic chickens.

In retaliation, the Capulets charged the Montagues $50 per chicken - handing over a hefty $600 bill.

The Montagues tried to avoid the bill by buying 12 new chicks for $2 each - which was a clever but unfruitful ploy.

The Capulets rejected the replacement chicks and the Montagues were left with 12 unwanted chickens, 24 less dollars than they started with and a $600 bill that had not disappeared.

Begrudgingly, the Montagues paid the Capulets and immediately started to plot their revenge.

The Montagues then put their revenge plan to action: They planted a strawberry vineyard just across the skinny dirt road from the free grazing "organic" chickens.

Now, when the hungry chickens inevitably wandered across the road and into the strawberry patch, the Montagues could hypothetically charge the Capulets for both the seeds that have been consumed and the plants that have been pooped on until the 600 dollar restitution was recouped.

The Capulets have tried to keep their chickens on their own side and the Montagues have tried to catch the chickens in the act of strawberry stealing - neither have been very successful. They have, however, been successful at broadcasting the various disputes and entertaining the rest of the road.

Here's where I come in.

A few morning ago I was driving to work, eating my ice cream breakfast, trying to put on my makeup without looking in the mirror and steering with my knee.

Don't ask me why my mouth is open, for some reason I, along with the rest of the female sex, feel it's somehow necessary to open my mouth in order to properly apply mascara to my eyelashes.

I turned the corner from our gravel road onto the dirt road that separates the Montague vineyard and the Capulet chickens. As I started to drive past the Capulet's house I noticed far fewer chickens surrounding their home and far more chickens across the road.

A majority of the organic chickens were in the strawberry field plucking at the berries and scratching at the ground.

Neither the Capulets nor the Montagues were around to witness the infraction so I snickered to myself just imagining the neighborly mess that would ensue later that morning.

All of the sudden the chickens decided they'd had quite enough stolen breakfast and decided to cross the road, right in front of my car.

Chickens are possibly the stupidest animals alive.

I threw on the breaks, and sadly my mascara, but thankfully didn't hit any of the chickens.

Whew.

I then tentatively started to pull forward, checking the whole time for more chickens trying to cross the road.

I continued through chicken territory, waiting patiently for the animals to make their way out of my path before lightly pushing the gas.

When I thought I had finally successfully traversed the road without any expensive casualties and I could see no more beaks in the front of my fender I started to pull forward.

I then heard a sharp squawk and felt a slight bump beneath me.

One stupid chicken decided to shoot the gap and I somehow managed to run him over going a whopping 5 mph.

Then I panicked.

And then I weighed my options. I could:

A) Fess up and pay for the $50 chicken

B) Pluck some feathers and frame the golden retriever

C) Flee the scene of the crime and leave the body for investigation

D) Hide all evidence

I chose D.

So I exited to the car to commence covering up my crime.

First I had to find out if I had really killed the chicken or just injured it.

When it didn't respond to verbal advances I decided to poke it

It didn't move.

The $50 chicken was definitely dead. I now had to dispose of the body.

I happened to have some mail from the day before in the back seat of my car.

Fortunately for me, we are not very popular. Thus the only thing the post master ever has to bring us is coupon papers for local grocers.

They served quite nicely as a seat cover.

I hesitantly picked up the dead chicken and threw him in the back seat, on top of the newspapers of course.

As I started to drive away it dawned on me that I had a Capulet corpse in the back of my car.

I couldn't leave it there when I went to work

In fact I didn't want it there while driving to work.

Panic set in once more. Sadly, there are no shady swamp lands nor mob dumping grounds to successfully hide corpses in Cache Valley, much less on the way to work.

I had no where to conspicuously dump the body.

So I did what any humane person would do and I abandoned the body near the stop sign on the corner of the Hyde Park Cemetery.

RIP chicken. RIP.

I then went to work, threw away the corpse contaminated coupons and washed my hands about 16 times (with scalding water) to ensure cleanliness for the preggo ladies I work with.